SANFORD, Fla. – Legal experts have started weighing in on special prosecutor Angela Corey's decision to skip the grand jury in the Trayvon Martin death investigation.
17-year-old unarmed Martin was shot and killed by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman on Feb. 26 while walking home from 7-Eleven.
Corey announced on Monday that she won't be passing the investigation to a grand jury, which was set to convene on Tuesday. The date was previously scheduled by the former state attorney on the case, Norm Wolfinger.
Attorney Mark O'Mara said he thinks Corey made the right choice because he says her job is to make tough decisions.
"Knowing Ms. Corey's reputation, I think it was the right move I don't think this case needed a grand jury to begin with," O'Mara said.
He said that Corey will base her decisions solely on the strength or weakness of evidence collected during the death investigation.
"A prosecutor has an obligation to only prosecute crimes they believe they can convict," O'Mara said. "If she doesn't believe she can get a conviction of Mr. Zimmerman, she should not charge him. Nor should she pass the buck off to the grand jury and say 'maybe they'll charge him.'"
If there is enough evidence for Zimmerman to be put on trial for manslaughter, or a similar charge, O'Mara said the law doesn't require Corey to get a second opinion from citizens.
"A grand jury has to hear a first degree murder case," he said. "This is not a first degree murder case in anybody's mind."
Even though Corey will make the charging decisions on her own, it's still possible that a grand jury could review Martin's death. Under Florida law, grand jurors can voluntarily look into any case they choose.
"If the grand jury got together tomorrow when they convene and said to the prosecutor 'we know about this case and we want to investigate', I think they have the right to do so," O'Mara said.
O'Mara said he thinks it's highly unlikely that a Seminole County grand jury will look into the Martin investigation because typically, grand jurors only consider criminal charges in cases brought to them by prosecutors.